


Half The News

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Crusade, Dark Angel
Genre: Drama, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-13
Updated: 2007-09-13
Packaged: 2019-02-05 18:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12799674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: Max Eilerson and an artefact he hasn't told anyone about





	Half The News

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

  
Author's notes: written for scribewraith  


* * *

Max turned it over and over in his palm, like a worry stone or a bad habit. It was odeed and irregular, a twist of angles and soft grooves, worn thin and smooth long ago by ancient fingers.

 

“Captain wants to see you,” Dureena announced casually from his doorway.

 

He dropped the relic into a drawer quickly, reminding himself to remove it before he left. If he didn’t, there was a good chance it wouldn’t be there when he returned.

 

“Haven’t you heard of knocking?” he groused.

 

“Heard of it. Didn’t care. Thief, remember?”

 

She was gone in the same manner she’d appeared.

 

He retrieved the cool bit of stone again, his thumb dusting across the fluid surfaces of the furrows and the more porous effect of the rest of it. He knew what it was, not just a find suspiciously left from his reports back to IPX, not just a bit of stone dated to antiquity.

 

It was a key. A key without a lock, like a door with no walls nor a room to shut upon, useless for now, but one day...

 

The inscription on the chamber walls where he’d uncovered it was as cryptic as the stone itself: “Hold it well, to unlock the grip of fate contained wherein” and the gypsy-woman, spent and crippled, rising from her pallet on some unnamed moon to grab his arm while it lay quietly in his pocket, “Never lost. Never found. You hold the key to free him. Hold it well…but it lies. It lies, it lies, IT LIES!” 

 

He pocketed the stone against his better judgment; he'd never liked carrying it since that day, or holding it for too long at all.

 

It lies she said. The key? How could a stone lie? It warmed against his leg, feeling safe, feeling like home, until it grew hot, unbearably hot, scalding him through the thin fabric of his pocket, branding his skin, marking him as property, as its own.

 

It lies.


End file.
